Vehicles have benefited from the advancement in electronics and computing technology. Vehicles now comprise an extensive array of electronics to support and enable navigation, entertainment, comfort, efficiency, reliability, and security.
The complexity of vehicle electronics often requires updates to the vehicle's hardware and/or software. Unfortunately, the ability to provide such updates also provides an avenue for malware. The malware may be a deliberate act to tamper with the vehicle or extract information from the vehicle. However, malware may have only beneficial intentions but have undesirable consequences. For example, replacing a hardware/software component in an automobile to allow for greater acceleration, as compared to the factory-intended performance, may inadvertently cause the vehicle's transmission to operate outside of the parameters for which it was engineered. Such an event may only occur with a certain other set of operating parameters, which may be rarely encountered.
Through debugging and testing processes are often employed to account for most or even all known conditions that may cause a vehicle to be vulnerable to malware. However, as every owner of a computer knows, malware always seems to find a way and frequent security updates, such as anti-virus data files, are required as one way to protect such systems from malware.
While externally induced malware may be the most common means for malware to become installed in a vehicle, it is not inconceivable that hardware or software installed during manufacturing or assembly of the vehicle may be compromised by malware, either deliberately malicious or that, under some previously unknown circumstances, cause the vehicle to operate in a manner that is undesired.